Google Cloud Is Joining the Web3 Craze

pcmag.com:

Google Cloud is building a team dedicated to Web 3.0 technologies.

CNBC reports that Google Cloud announced its Web 3.0 ambitions to employees on May 6. "While the world is still early in its embrace of Web3," Google Cloud VP Amit Zavery said in an internal email, "it is a market that is already demonstrating tremendous potential with many customers asking us to increase our support for Web3 and Crypto related technologies."

A quick refresher on Web 3.0: The idea is that moving pretty much everything to blockchain technologies, which are currently used primarily by cryptocurrencies, will allow the internet to be decentralized. That's a lofty goal—especially since many of these decentralized platforms are scams, vulnerable to theft, and otherwise failing to deliver on their promise of a better internet.

That quote from Zavery almost makes it sound like Google Cloud is considering the creation of a cryptocurrency or toying with the idea of minting non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for its customers. Zavery reportedly told CNBC that won't be the case. Instead, the company is going to be developing tools that allow its customers to play around with blockchain-enabled technologies.

CNBC says that "Google could devise a system other companies could employ to make blockchain data easy for people to explore, while simplifying the process of building and running blockchain nodes for validating and recording transactions," per Zavery. It could even make those systems available on competitive platforms like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure.

Google Cloud's new Web3 team will be led by a former Citigroup executive, James Tromans, and CNBC says that it's supposed to "bring together employees who have been peripherally involved in Web3